Society
Cards (20)
- “The ultimate aim was to create a transparent society in which people would police themselves through mutual surveillance and the denunciation of ‘anti-Soviet’ behaviour. The constant public scrutiny drove people to withdraw into themselves and live behind a mask of soviet conformity to preserve their own identity."
- November 1917 saw the abolition of the “class hierarchy”, titles and privileges disappeared and everyone became a plain citizen or grazhdanin. Party members could be addressed as tovarishch (comrade).
- Former nobility and bourgeoisie were not allowed to work and were made to perform menial tasks such as road-sweeping. Their houses were requisitioned and turned into kommunalka for the workers (a communal dwelling; typically 2 to 7 families shared a hallway, kitchen and bathroom while each family had its own room, serving as a living/dining room and bedroom).
- Rationing in the Civil War was based on “work value”. Workers and soldiers received the most; essential civil servants and professionals (such as doctors) got a lower rate; the burzhui barely had enough to survive on. Some had to sell their possessions and middle-class girls were known to turn to prostitution.
- There was a reprieve during the NEP years, from 1921. This capitalist-esque policy was an admission that Soviet Russia still needed bourgeois “specialists” in the interests of economic growth. It didn’t stop the attack on the bourgeois “way of life” (known as byt) and with Stalin’s decision to halt the NEP, class-based attacks continued through the 1930s and beyond.
- The communists wanted to create a new “socialist man”: the type of man who was publicly engaged and committed to the community. They would have a sense of social responsibility and would willingly give service to the State-in the factory, on the fields or in battle. The environment (whether land reorganisation or industrial city complexes) was shaped so that the community took precedence over the individual.
- Life was “far from a paradise for the workers”. After a brief spell of “worker power”, both in the factories and on the land in the early months of Bolshevik rule, labour discipline was tightened and that early “freedom” never returned. Internal passports were issued during the Civil War to stop workers leaving their employment. By 1921, workers could be imprisoned or shot if they failed to meet targets and unions became a means of keeping the workers under control.
- Under Stalin, collectivisation meant many emigrated to the towns, almost doubling the labour force by 1932. Industrialisation brought a 7 day working week and longer working hours. Arriving late or missing work could result in dismissal, eviction from housing and loss of benefits. Damaging machinery or leaving a job without permission was a criminal offence and strikes were illegal.
- He was hailed as an example of how human endeavour and determination could increase productivity.
- Competitions were arranged and the number of broken records became ridiculous, filling two volumes. Managers who failed to fulfil targets (and targets increased on average 10% in 1936) could be branded as “saboteurs” and removed.
- His purges (which hit the intellectuals and white-collar workers hardest) reduced the numbers competing for jobs and created plenty of vacancies “at the top”. But life remained tough: in the countryside it was primitive and in the towns, workers lived in cramped communal apartments, with inadequate sanitation and erratic water supplies. Public transport was over-crowded, shops were often empty and queues and shortages were an accepted feature of life.
- Real wages did increase in the Second Five Year Plan but they were still lower in 1937 than they were in 1928. Rationing was phased out in 1935 but market prices were high. Furthermore, those in positions of importance in the Socialist system (e.g. party cadres) could obtain more goods more cheaply, but ordinary workers’ living standards stagnated and may have fallen just before the war.
- The peasant women before the revolution had attended to household tasks and the children, and may have played a small part in farming or the small-scale domestic economy. They had no legal privileges or inheritance rights.
- in 1926 gave women in “common law” marriages the same rights as those who underwent the civil ceremony; in 1928, wedding rings were banned.
- Girls were given the same educational rights as boys so a minority could obtain qualifications and careers not previously available. “But for most the double burden of work and home made for a grim life constant toil”.
- Stalin reverted to more traditional policies. “This was driven by several factors, including a fall in population growth-not helped by the purges nor by the living conditions on the collectives and in the komunalki; and also fears of war.”
- The “family” became the focus of a new wave of propaganda and Stalin was presented as a “father figure” “family man”. Divorce and abortion were attacked and wedding rings were reintroduced. Films and art portrayed women in a new way; no longer the muscular, plainly dressed women who built Soviet Russia in the 1920s, but more feminine family women with adoring children.
- A number of measures introduced by Stalin in 1936: large fees were introduced to deter divorce and men would also have to contribute 60% of their income in child support; adultery was criminalised and the names of male offenders were published in the press; contraception was banned and only permitted on medical grounds; financial incentives offered for large families, tax exemptions for families of 6 or more and bonus payments for every additional child to ten in the family.
- Despite this, many women continued to work. The number of female industrial workers grew from 3 million in 1928 to 13 million in 1940 and 43% of the industrial workforce was female by 1940. The numbers of women in education doubled over this period and large numbers of women worked on collective farms. A growth in state nurseries, creches and canteens helped women to cope with work and family but women earned 40% less than men and higher administrative posts were mostly held by men.
- The divorce rate also stayed high (37% in Moscow in 1934) and there were still over 150,000 abortions to every 57,000 live births. Although in 1937, 91% of men and 82% of women in their thirties were married, the years 1928 to 1940 actually saw a falling rate of population growth.